*NEW* – Maybe Only the Caged Bird Will Sing by Elsi Vassdal Ellis

Description

This edition was not planned or designed in advance but emerged during productive play time to reacquaint myself with my Vandercook 4 while using up leftover materials in the studio. Using mounted fiberglass table mats the printing began by laying down patterns front and back on three stacks of press sheets. Searching through my cuts, dingbats, and ornaments I chose the theme of birds. Lifestyle Crafts inks (light blue and royal blue) were used to print blue ink on blue paper as a continuation of a monochrome series begun in 2012. Room was left for the insertion of text generated from articles saved from The New Scientist, Discover, Smithsonian, and The Week. The text highlights the dangers faced by birds as well as survival skills. There are two barrel-roll signatures designed to take advantage of artwork width and potential, and for a binding challenge. No new materials were purchased for this edition as part of my second series, also begun in 2012: “Waste Not, Want Not.”

Additional Information

Title

Maybe Only the Caged Bird Will Sing

Artist/Creator

Elsi Vassdal Ellis

Press Name/Publisher

Eve Press

Place of Publication

Bellingham, WA

Printing/ Reproduction Process

Letterpress

Number of Images/ Illustrations

68

Book Structure/ Binding Method

Gary Frost sewn board binding

Medium/ Materials

Lifestyle Crafts Royal Blue and two versions of Light blue ink; handset Goudy Catalogue and Cursive, and Hadrian

Paper Stock

French Pop-tone Sno Cone and Astrobright Blast-Off Blue papers

Number of Pages

72 pages plus two barrel roll sections

Dimensions (WxH) or (WxHxD)

3.2 x 5.3 x .5 inches close

Publication Date

2017

Edition Size

Edition of 20

Signed and Numbered?

Signed by the artist

Artist's Bio

Elsi Vassdal Ellis creates books in a well-equipped letterpress and digital studio in the Pacific Northwest. Since 1983 she has produced 152 editions (offset, letterpress, digital, stenciled, punched and cloth) as EVE Press as well 115 one-of-a-kinds. She exhibits nationally and internationally with work permanently housed in many public collections including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, SFMOMA, and Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry. She retired after 40 years of university teaching. Themes in her work include current affairs, war, and religion.